Tod Linafelt | Georgetown University (original) (raw)

Papers by Tod Linafelt

A paper presented at a conference on "Self-Reflection, Dispute, and Lament in Job's Speeches," he... more A paper presented at a conference on "Self-Reflection, Dispute, and Lament in Job's Speeches," held at the University of Leipzig in 2023; now published in the conference proceedings.

Journal of Biblical Literature

The relationship between the lengthy poetic middle section of the book of Job and the brief prose... more The relationship between the lengthy poetic middle section of the book of Job and the brief prose frame has typically been treated by scholars as a question of compositional history or, occasionally, of genre (Gattung). What is missing from these approaches is a sustained consideration of the form-bound literary resources of ancient Hebrew prose and verse. Such a consideration suggests that, regardless of how many authors the book of Job may have had, poetry is present because it allows the book to do things that by convention could not be done in prose. In contrast to biblical Hebrew prose, verse is used almost exclusively for nonnarrative genres, consistently takes the form of direct discourse (rather than objective narration), is often employed for the expression of feeling or thought, and exhibits no qualms about the elaborate use of figurative language and visual imagery. The book of Job relies on these elements of biblical poetic style, largely unavailable to biblical prose narrative, in order to achieve the working out of its plot and to stage the intellectual debate essential to the book. The single most conspicuous formal feature of the book of Job is surely the dramatic shift from prose to poetry at the beginning of chapter 3, with an equally conspicuous if slightly less dramatic shift back to prose at 42:7. 1 Yet the significance of this shift has scarcely been treated as a formal feature. Everyone recognizes the formal shift, but almost no one interprets it. To be sure, there exists in the commentaries some very fine analysis of the poetry, with perceptive treatments to be found of the various forms of parallelism and of diction, metaphor, structure, and so on. But the more basic question of why there is poetry in the book of Job, of what is gained in the book by this dramatic shift, goes almost entirely unasked. So, for example, Edwin Good, in the introduction to his sophisticated literary 1 Masoretic manuscripts use a different pointing system for the three poetic books of Job, Proverbs, and Psalms. Significantly, Job 1:1-3:2 and 42:7-17 use the more common "prose" accentual system. Jerome too identified this precise division of the book into prose and poetry, even if he had difficulty making the poetry fit into the classical meters he expected to find there.

The adverb ‫חנם‬ occurs twice (1:9 and 2:3) in the prose narrative of the book of Job. Despite th... more The adverb ‫חנם‬ occurs twice (1:9 and 2:3) in the prose narrative of the book of Job. Despite their close proximity, there is a tendency among translators and commentators to interpret the two occurrences differently. Against the consensus that understands ‫חנם‬ in 1:9 as indicating ends ("for no reason") and in 2:3 as indicating origins ("without cause"), we argue that one can and should interpret ‫חנם‬ in both cases to mean "without effect." In our reading of 2:3, then, God is saying to the Adversary "You incited me against him, to destroy him with no effect," that is, with no achieved purpose. The first round of testing has failed to solve the central question driving the opening narrative-namely, the motivation for Job's piety-and so has been judged by God to have been ‫,חנם‬ thus making another round of testing necessary.

Although the Book of Ruth is in many respects a classic example of biblical Hebrew narrative, wit... more Although the Book of Ruth is in many respects a classic example of biblical Hebrew narrative, with its stripped-down style and the opaqueness of its character's inner lives and motivations, there are two examples of formal poetry in the book (1:16-17 and 1:20-21). Biblical poetry works with a very different set of literary conventions than narrative, and by taking note of those conventions, we can see the distinctive contributions made by these poems to the book as a whole.

Using George Bataille's reflections on desire, death, and God as the basis for considering the lo... more Using George Bataille's reflections on desire, death, and God as the basis for considering the love poetry of the Song of Songs as a manifestation of the commingling of separate realms and separate bodies in the service of a longed-for continuity helps us to see that such a commingling is never far from the domain of violence and that such continuity of being is never far from death. But the biblical book itself helps us to see something that is missing from Bataille's analysis-that is, a more complex understanding of the implications of desire for the divine. What if, contra Bataille, God were not "by definition" immune to risk? What if the divine were not understood to be perfection but, rather, bound as well to the vicissitudes of desire, with all the anguish and ecstasy that it implies? The Song of Song's lyrical presentation of Eros, carried over as it is into the tradition of allegorical interpretation, may, in fact, have rather profound implications for how we talk about God.

Books by Tod Linafelt

Available now, in Oxford's Very Short Introduction series.

Journal of Biblical Literature

Available now, in Oxford's Very Short Introduction series.